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Imperfections of the Work.

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venience in a book, that you cannot ask questions; there is no explanation: and a man is less guarded in conversation than in a book, and tells you with more honesty the little niceties and exceptions of his opinions; whereas in a book, as his opinions are canvassed where they cannot be explained and defended, he often overstates a point for fear of being misunderstood; but then, on the contrary, almost every man talks a great deal better in his books, with more sense, more information, and more reflection, than he can possibly do in his conversation, because he has more time.

"There are few good listeners in the world who make all the use that they might make of the understandings of others, in the conduct of their own. The use made of this great instrument of conversation is the display of superiority, not the gaining of those materials on which superiority may rightfully and justly be founded. Every man takes a different view of a question as he is influenced by constitution, circumstances, age, and a thousand other peculiarities; and no individual ingenuity can sift and examine a subject with as much variety and success as the minds of many men, put in motion by many causes, and affected by an endless variety of accidents. Nothing, in my humble opinion, would bring an understanding so forward, as this habit of ascertaining and weighing the opinions of others; a point in which almost all men of abilities are deficient; whose first impulse, if they are young, is too often to contradict; or, if the manners of the world have cured them of that, to listen only with attentive ears, but with most obdurate and unconquerable entrails. I may be very wrong, and proba bly am so, but, in the whole course of my life, I do not know that I ever saw a man of considerable understanding respect the understandings of others as much as he might have done for his own improvement, and as it was just that he should do." — pp. 282, 283.

The Third and last Course treats of the Active Powers of the Mind, including the various affections, passions, and desires, and closes with two lectures on Habit. In this part of his work the author begins to betray symptoms of weariness of the subject; at any rate, he enters on the discussion of some of the disputed points with a very inadequate acquaintance with the merits of the question and the history of the controversy. In illustration of the last remark, we would refer to what he says of the origin of the passions, a topic on which he not only breaks with the Scotch, whom he generally follows, but takes the extreme ground maintained by the Hart

leian school. Still, there is no lecture which could well be spared, and some of those now under consideration are among the most practically useful in the volume. In the following passage, the effect of civilization on the importance attached to the passions and affections is depicted in his peculiar manner.

"I take it to be a consequence of civilization, that all the feelings of mind which proceed from the body excite little sympathy, in comparison with those which have not a bodily origin. The loss of a leg or an arm is a dreadful misfortune; but the slightest disgrace would be considered as a much greater. To be laid up seven months by the gout every year is a piteous state of existence; to lose a brother or a sister is a state of existence, in common estimation, still more miserable. The slightest pang of jealousy, or wounded pride, may be brought upon the stage; but the most intense pain of body, introduced into a play, would excite laughter rather than compassion. Who would endure a tragedy, where the whole distress turned upon a fit of the palsy, or a smart rheumatic fever? Nothing could be more exquisitely ridiculous! The fact is, as a nation advances in the useful arts, all bodily evils are so much mitigated, and guarded against, that they cease to excite that sympathy which they formerly did, because they are less generally felt. How ridiculous, as I before remarked, a play would be, of which a hungry man were the hero! Why? because we never suffer from extreme hunger, and have very little sympathy for it; there is hardly any such thing known in civilized society: the author himself would, probably, be the only man in the whole play. house who had ever seriously felt the want of a dinner. a nation of savages were to see such a drama acted, they would see no ridicule in it at all; because starving to death is, among them, no uncommon thing: they are advanced such a little way in civilization, that to fill their stomachs is the great and important object of life and I have no doubt, that, to an Indian audience, the loss of a piece of venison might be the basis of a tragedy which would fill every eye with tears; but, on the contrary, they might be very likely to laugh, to hear a man complain of his wounded honor, if it turned out that he had ten days' provisions beforehand in his cabin. In the same manner, the loss of a leg is the consummation of all evil, where there is nothing but body; but it becomes an evil of the lowest order, where there remain behind the pleasures of imagination, of elegant learning, of the fine arts, of all the luxuries and glories of civilization, the tendency of which is always to put down and vilify every thing which belongs to the body, and to exalt all the feelings in which the mind alone is concerned. In some of the

But if

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Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity.

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Greek tragedies, there is an attempt to excite compassion by the representation of the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from the extremity of his suffering, exclaiming upon the stage, O Jupiter! my leg, my leg!' Hippolytus and Hercules are both introduced as expiring under the severest torments. These attempts to excite compassion by the representation of bodily pain are certainly among the greatest breaches of decorum, of which the Greek theatre has set the example; and afford a strong suspicion that their audience was less elegant and refined than that which presides over our modern theatres. And the reason why such sort of appeals to the passions would not now be tolerated is not so much on account of the pain they would excite (because the sufferings of the mind excite pain), but because bodily pain is a dull, stupid, unvarying, uninteresting spectacle, in comparison with all those critical and delicate emotions of mind, which are universally felt in a state of civilization, and in that state alone." pp. 364-366.

Many readers of this work will be surprised to find that metaphysics, as the English persist in miscalling it, or the science of the human mind, can be made as fit a subject for popular lecturing as any of the physical sciences. Its leading topics are not so far removed from the range of ordinary thought; its language is by no means so technical or so unfamiliar; it is more capable than any other science of historical illustration and rhetorical embellishment; it has less to do with perplexing and unsettled questions than geology or physiology, both of which are now so much in vogue; and as for its paramount utility it is enough to say, that the knowledge of mind, or of human nature, is the knowledge of ourselves.

J. W.

ART. V.-FEUERBACH'S ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.*

It is somewhat noteworthy, that one of the comparatively few books dropped from the German press during the last year should have been a new edition of this

* Das Wesen des Christenthum. ungearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. 1849. [The Essence of Christianity. Edition, revised and improved.]

Von LUDWIG FEUERBACH. Dritte
Leipzig: Verlag von Otto Wigaud.
By LUDWIG FEUERBACH. Third

work of Feuerbach. More conclusive evidence of its popularity could not be found, nor - may we not add? —— of its adaptation to the particular fervor of the time. Political agitation has had no good results for book-writers and book-printers, though we must do the Leipzig publishers the justice to say, that the peril to their pockets seems to have had little effect on their republican ardor. The times have a sympathy for Feuerbach. We are not

aware what his political views may be, and indeed have been informed that those of his co-laborer, Strauss, are extremely conservative: but in the author of this book we can hardly fancy a very violent champion of the throne. Radicalism is a consuming fire, which has no animating principle but an intense hatred of the past; it devours without discrimination whatever is, that it may lay anew the foundations for its glorious future. It unites the hostility against church and state, and, whether voluntarily or not, compels them to serve the same purpose. As the great revolution of France was kindled and fed by hands that contributed to the pages of the Encyclopædia, we are not surprised to find the modern spirit of political reform putting itself in antagonism to Christianity; and it is a certain fact, that the radical leaders of modern Germany are as free-thinking in their way as the disciples of Voltaire, or that "proselyting atheist," Diderot.

But the atheism of Feuerbach, if as sweeping as that of the French school of accomplished materialists, is far more worthy our respect; it is the child of a grave and earnest philosophy, not of a frivolous buffoonery. If it loosens the reins of speculation, it never relaxes those of the morals; if it ascends to the seventh heaven of mystical speculation, it speaks always the intelligible language of earth; if it leaves us to the desolation of a godless universe, it does not plunder nor tarnish the jewel of our self-respect; if it annihilates Deity, it seeks to give every man something of the dignity of a god.

Feuerbach is a disciple of Hegel.* This book is the

*At different times during the last twenty years Feuerbach has appeared before the public, and his views are contained in a series of volumes, which bear the following titles: -" Philosophical Criticisms and Principles,""Thoughts on Death and Immortality," "History of Modern Philosophy from Bacon of Verulam to Benedict Spinoza," Exposition, Develop

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voice of what has been called the "Left Wing" of Hegelians. From the same ranks Bauer has given utterance to a "Biblisches Christenthum," and Strauss to a "Glaubenslehre" and a "Leben Jesu." Who is to decide whether all this array of speculation is Hegelianism,legitimate offspring of the great principle? Could their master speak from his grave, he would probably disclaim them. But Hegelianism is fairly divided against itself; its good promises of unity have vanished into air; the completion of all philosophic speculation, the goal of all philosophic struggle, is but the starting-point of a new contest, and the vista of metaphysical wrangling opens as interminable as ever. And how soon the dream is past! The voice still rings in our ears; we seem to hear its pleasant assurance, that these intricate questions, which have vexed the brains of the learned from Heraclitus to Schelling, had received their final solution; that the mighty structure of metaphysical speculation, which had been built on with ceaseless toil and Babel confusion of tongues, had been crowned at last, and the capping-stone, whose elevation was celebrated with such solemn ceremonies, was the famous "principle of identity." But it is in vain; the boasted completion threatens to be but a Sisyphus's labor. A keen commentator affirms that Hegel has got hold of the same stone of which it is said,

"Glaubt er ihn aber

Schon auf dem Gipfel zu drehn, da mit einmal stürzte die hast um Hurtig hinab mit Gepolter entrollte der tückische Marnur." * The "principle of identity" has not even produced unity among its own disciples. They are diverging from each other in all directions, and we feel certain that the blank atheism of the book before us, if its legitimate deduction, would be more repulsive to none than to the great high-priest himself.

The various departments to which the Hegelian philosophy applies have been supported with unusual talent, and, what is a little remarkable, talent of the most prac

ment, and Criticism of the Philosophy of Leibnitz," "Pierre Bayle, a Contribution to the History of Philosophy and Manhood," - "The Essence of Christianity," and a "Supplementary. Volume on the Essence of Christianity."

"The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground."
Pope's Odyssey, XI. 737.

VOL. XLIX. —4TH. S. VOL. XIV. NO. II.

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